Can Asset Tracking help Polish Manufacturing Businesses increase Output?
Polish industrial production output has been increasing.
The sixth largest manufacturing country within the European Union, Poland has been achieving impressive results. The total industrial output increased by 9.2 percent year on year in April 2019, according to the local Central Statistical Office (GUS).
However, Poland still ranks as a moderately innovative country — 21st position in the Bloomberg Innovation Index. The local government is investing in the development of Industry 4.0 to make local manufacturers more productive and competitive.
For example, the Industry 4.0 Platform was launched together with the European Commission earlier this year, and it describes the vision of the country of leaping into Industry 4.0.
Indeed, the country has a long way to go because most local manufacturers still use the technology of the third industrial revolution, or Industry 3.0. In fact, the recent Astor report called Inżynierowie Przemysłu 4.0 (Nie)gotowi do zmian? (Engineers of Industry 4.0: [Not] ready for changes?) described that only 6 percent of manufacturers in Poland have moved to smart manufacturing technologies.
The following image shows the the percentage of manufacturers using technologies of the first, second, third, and fourth industrial revolutions (W trakcie której rewolucji przemysłowej znajduje się obecnie Twoja firma?).
The surveys of workers in Polish factories also support the idea that manufacturers should adopt smart manufacturing technology to eliminate inefficiencies and accelerate the growth of industrial production.
One survey completed in a large manufacturing factory in the Wielkopolska region in Poland asked 1,000+ employees about the most important barriers to Continuous Improvement (or Kaizen in Lean Manufacturing) implementation.
The results were quite interesting, and they show the importance of adopting Industry 4.0 technology to achieve the best performance in manufacturing as well as Lean goals.
What Prevents Manufacturing Businesses from Increasing Output in Poland?
As it was mentioned, more than 1,000 workers from a large production factory in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, also known as Wielkopolska Voivodeship, participated in the survey.
Their facility was implementing Lean Manufacturing principles to optimize production, so the respondents were asked to identify the most important types of waste that needed to be eliminated to increase production.
According to the answers provided by the workers working in manufacturing facilities in the factory, the following types of waste were the most impacting.
As you can see from the above image, important types of waste are:
- Transportation waste (unnecessary transport, 96.41 percent of answers)
- Movement waste (employee motion waste, 79 percent of answers)
- Overprocessing waste (79 percent of answers)
- Waiting waste (70 percent of answers).
According to the survey, the findings highlighted the need to optimize employee working routines and track shifts to identify productivity risks. For example, continuous tracking of continuous human work can help to determine the real time workers spend on completing their tasks during shifts and understand where and why a certain waste happens.
Industry 4.0 technology could assist production managers in Poland to eliminate the abovementioned types of waste and increase the total output. For example, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) real-time tracking systems (RTLS) can allow tracking moving assets — tugger trains, automated guided vehicles, forklifts, and employees — in real time, thus enabling to see how they move when performing their duties.
As a result, production managers and decision makers can understand how to improve their processes and eliminate waste. As more and more Polish manufacturers begin to move to Industry 4.0 and track their assets with RTLS, the interest in technologies like real-time asset tracking is increasing.
We have recently completed a forklift tracking project for a Polish manufacturer of components for the automotive industry and helped to discover transportation waste as well as other business risks in forklift shifts.
The Bottom Line
Many Polish manufacturing businesses are already exploring the benefits of Industry 4.0 technologies like process automation and real-time analytics provided by asset tracking systems.
Indeed, many local businesses are already looking for solutions to improve and transform their manufacturing processes in the upcoming years; without a doubt, real-time asset performance insights and analytics will definitely be one of the factors contributing to achieving this goal.
